Monday, 24 November 2003: Episode 3 — Boyd

Arthur Boyd was a painter from a family of painters, potters, architects, writers and sculptors  but his fame eclipsed them all. This is a story about money, art and love. How five generations ago, Australia's most celebrated artistic dynasty came to be blessed with the divine right to a creative life, now lived under the shadow of greatness.

If you're a Boyd, everyone expects you to be an artist. For six generations, this extraordinary family has produced some of Australia's leading painters, potters, writers, architects and musicians.

This is the story of an extraordinary creative inheritance  founded by money and nurtured on love, which is now struggling with the burden of genius.

It began with the only daughter of a convict who became Melbourne's first brewer. Emma a Beckett inherited a fortune made from real estate and beer. It was tainted money, but she used it to encourage her family in a life of leisure and art.

By the third generation, the family fortune was almost spent, but Emma's investment in art was paying off. It was the fourth generation, however, that would revive the dynastic fortunes.

Set apart from the world by poverty and eccentricity, raised with unquestioning love, and imbued with a belief in their divine right to an artistic life, this fourth generation would find spectacular artistic and commercial success  most notably in the genius of Arthur Boyd.

Arthur's fame and fortune as one of the greatest painters of his generation ensured the dynasty's ascendancy. His siblings and cousins too would be successful painters, sculptors, ceramicists and even architects. Since then, two more generations of Boyds have continued to produce art. None have matched Arthur's genius, and all have had to live in the shadow of his fame.

Before he died, Arthur donated his Australian home and studio, Bundanon, to the public as an art and education centre, in an effort to safeguard the family heritage and keep its legacy burning for posterity. And despite the critics, the Boyds still believe that all creative endeavour is blessed  and, at least for now, have clung tenaciously to their calling.